Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has asked the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office to launch an investigation into the scandal surrounding the destruction of abortion records during the administration for former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The destruction of the records led to a decision by a state judge yesterday to dismiss all 23 felony charges and 26 related misdemeanor charges against Planned Parenthood because the Kansas Health department (KDHE) destroyed the crucial records used as evidence in the case in 2005.

Although 58 of the misdemeanor charges for illegal late-term abortions remain to be prosecuted at a February hearing, Schmidt said late Wednesday that he has asked the Shawnee County sheriff to investigate and asked the county’s district attorney to handle any resulting case.

“’(Schmidt) wants a complete, separate investigation from an outside law enforcement agency,’ Sheriff Dick Barta said, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. ‘That’s why we were requested to do that.’”

During the hearing yesterday, District Attorney Steve Howe explained to Judge Stephen Tatum that former Attorney General Steve Six had destroyed the copies of Termination of Pregnancy (TOP) forms obtained through subpoena under former Attorney General Phill Kline. The destruction took place after Kline had filed the charges and while the case was under appeal. Howe indicated that the destruction of the evidence by Six “may have violated their own retention policy.”

Last month, Howe stunned pro-life supporters when he told Judge Tatum that the original TOP forms submitted by Planned Parenthood to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) had been destroyed in 2005 “for reasons still unclear.”

The forms were critical evidence since a copy of the forms were supposed to be maintained in the patient files. However, when Kline received the patient files after three years of legal wrangling, it was discovered that the forms submitted to KDHE and the forms in the patient records did not match. Judge Richard Anderson had the forms analyzed by police handwriting evidence and determined that the forms in the patient filed had been manufactured.

Kansas, November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A Kansas judge has thrown out 49 of the most serious felony and misdemeanor charges in the country’s first criminal case against Planned Parenthood, after it was revealed that key evidence in the case had been destroyed. However, 58 criminal charges related to unlawful late-term abortions will still move forward.

The dropped charges related to allegations that Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri had failed to keep proper patient records, and then forged records when they were requested during the investigation into the abortion provider.

At the center of the dispute were copies of patient records obtained by former District Attorney Phill Kline, who launched the case against Planned Parenthood in 2007, and the original patient records submitted to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

But during a hearing Wednesday, District Attorney Steve Howe explained to Judge Stephen Tatum that former Attorney General Steve Six had destroyed the copies of Termination of Pregnancy (TOP) forms in 2009. The destruction took place after Kline had filed the charges and while the case was under appeal. Howe indicated that the destruction of the records may have violated the retention policies of the Attorney General’s office.

Last month, Howe stunned pro-life supporters when he told Judge Tatum that the original TOP forms submitted by Planned Parenthood to the KDHE had also been destroyed in 2005 “for reasons still unclear.”

Phill Kline, a former Kansas attorney general and district attorney for Johnson County, is the only US prosecutor to succeed in filing a criminal case against Planned Parenthood. This week 49 of the most serious charges in that case have been dropped after it was revealed that key evidence in the case had been destroyed by state officials.

The news of document destruction in Kansas does not come as a surprise for me. Rather, after a decade of obstruction, the latest indicates that the evidence of Kansas corruption to protect Planned Parenthood is leaking into the media.

Two weeks ago a hearing in a criminal case against Planned Parenthood was delayed. The delay was a result of the administration of current Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius destroying evidence of criminal activity while Sebelius was Governor of Kansas.

The evidence was destroyed at a time the Sebelius administration knew the documents were key to a criminal investigation of Planned Parenthood’s failure to report child rape. Planned Parenthood is an important and long-term political ally of Sebelius.

When the documents were destroyed in 2005, I was leading the investigation of Planned Parenthood as the Attorney General of Kansas. Our evidence had revealed that during a time when 166 abortions were performed on children in Kansas, Planned Parenthood had only reported one case of child molestation.

My investigators obtained this evidence after months of battling the Sebelius administration and obtaining four separate court orders for the administration to produce the documents.

While we continue to fight Planned Parenthood in court in California and in Texas, defend states like Indiana that don’t want to be forced to fund Planned Parenthood in their state, and work to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, there is yet another developing story that demonstrates the lengths to which Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion government officials will go to increase abortion on demand.

The story involves the dismissal of 49 criminal counts, including 23 felonies, against Planned Parenthood in Kansas. The felony charges that were dismissed were for falsifying required abortion reports, and the evidence strongly suggested more of an all-too-familiar pattern for Planned Parenthood – one of ignoring the law and disregarding the safety of young girls.

As troubling as these charges and the supporting evidence is, the reason for the dismissal of the charges may be even more concerning, because it involves very suspicious activities at the highest levels of both the Kansas and federal governments.

To quickly provide some background, the abortion reports that were needed to prove the 23 felony counts were held by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), and a copy was held by the Kansas Attorney General’s office. The KDHE copies were destroyed in 2005 during then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius’ Administration, and the Attorney General’s copies were destroyed in 2009 by then-Attorney General Steve Six, roughly 18 months after the charges were brought against Planned Parenthood. By this time, Sebelius was the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the Obama Administration.

So, to put it bluntly, it would appear that the top law enforcement official in Kansas destroyed key evidence in a pending case involving 23 felony counts. This was done in violation of his own office’s retention policy. While we have come to expect this type of unseemly behavior from Planned Parenthood, it is unacceptable on a whole new level for elected officials to follow suit.

Now, as an investigation into the destruction of these records begins, Secretary Sebelius and former Attorney General Six must be required to provide Kansans and the American People with an accounting for how this occurred on their watch. Regardless of their personal views on abortion, destroying evidence cripples the rule of law that is so fundamental to our system of justice, and it must not be tolerated. Planned Parenthood should not be above the law, and federal officials should be enforcing the law, not helping circumvent it.

This is just the most recent reason why it is critical for taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood to cease. Americans do not want to fund abortion-on-demand in the first place, and they definitely don’t want their elected officials to help cover up criminal activity. It’s time to stop funding Planned Parenthood with taxpayer dollars. That will at least be a first step to ending their coziness with elected officials, and will leave the funding of their abortion business to private individuals. The time has come.

One interesting side note: Attorney General Six was rewarded for his time as Attorney General by receiving a nomination from President Obama to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has declined to approve his nomination. Clearly, they demonstrated better judgment than Six did as Attorney General.

The pro-life group Operation Rescue has released a new timeline covering, very specifically, all of the details related to the massive scandal involving HHS Secretary and former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius.

The Obama official has come under heavy fire from prolife groups who are pointing out how a state attorney general she appointed in Kansas destroyed documents related 107 criminal charges former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline filed against the abortion business. The charges alleged that planned Parenthood failed to report cases of child rape on children on whom Planned Parenthood did abortions, that it failed to test whether an unborn child was viable (as required by state law) before doing a late-term abortion, and that it manipulated records it submitted to the state to cover up those crimes.

Because former attorney general Steve Six, the Sebelius appointee, destroyed the documents, a court dismissed all of the felony charges filed against Planned Parentood because the evidence supporting those charges had been destroyed.

Now, Operation Rescue has released today a brief video and updated timeline detailing events leading to the recent revelations that crucial evidence against a Kansas Planned Parenthood was destroyed. OR says the scandal is important because it involves one of the top officials in the Obama administration and the willful destruction of evidence against the nation’s biggest abortion business.

The video gives a brief explanation of the political climate that led to the destruction of documents that supported criminal charges filed in 2007 by Kline alleging that Planned Parenthood committed felonies by forging documents to cover for misdemeanor failure to maintain records. The timeline has been updated to include information from recently unsealed records that detail Kline’s efforts to investigate criminal conduct at Planned Parenthood from the time he was elected as Attorney General in 2003, through his tenure as Johnson County District Attorney and beyond.

The timeline includes links to important court documents, including a copy of one set of forms, the original of which were destroyed by the Sebelius-controlled Kansas Department of Health and Environment and copies destroyed by Sebelius-appointed Steve Six.

“This criminal prosecution is important because at stake is no less than $350 million dollars in Federal tax money that flows to Planned Parenthood every year – under the condition that their affiliates all obey the law,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

Newman continued: “This case against Planned Parenthood has been eight years in the making, but now we find out that it has been subverted by governmental corruption tracked back to Kathleen Sebelius. This is completely unacceptable. It shakes the public’s confidence that the system can work. We call on the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation and aggressively prosecute all those who have obstructed justice to protect Planned Parenthood in order to put a final end to corruption and restore the public’s trust.”

The American Life League (ALL) has produced a new video calling for the resignation of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (see earlier story).

Sebelius served as Kansas governor during a time in which then-Attorney General Phill Kline was investigating Planned Parenthood of Kansas City. Michael Hichborn is host of the American Life League Report, the pro-life organization's ongoing video project intended to inform the public on life-related topics. The recent segment, "He Said, She Shred" (view right), explains more about the HHS secretary's interference in Kline's investigation.

"Kathleen Sebelius' administration blocked Phill Kline's investigation, used the Sebelius-stacked Supreme Court of Kansas to block the investigation, to keep Phill Kline from really digging into the meat of what Planned Parenthood was doing," Hichborn details. "And ultimately, as it turns out, all of the felony charges and some of the other charges that Phill Kline was able to file against Planned Parenthood had to be thrown out because Sebelius' administration shredded the evidence."

One of the most serious charges against the abortion giant is that it performed abortions on minors without parental notification or consent and without reporting the statutory rape to authorities. That is why ALL believes it is appropriate for Sebelius to resign her federal post.